Citizens of Heaven

This Sunday we are starting a new message series at Southwest. The title of it is Citizens of Heaven, and it’s based on the book of 1 Peter. You may be aware that Peter has an incredible journey of faith in the Bible. When we first meet him, he is a rough-around-the-edges fisherman in Galilee. He has many spiritual highs in the Gospels as well as some significant spiritual lows. 

 So by this point in Peter’s life, when he is writing the book of 1 Peter, he is an experienced disciple of Jesus, an evangelist, and an elder who cares deeply for the church. He is drawing on his time with Jesus, his triumphs and failures, and most importantly on the guidance from the Holy Spirit to write a very practical book of the Bible that emphasizes who we are in Christ and how we are to live in a world that does not (yet) know God.

 One of the things Peter emphasizes in his book is that even though we might have a document from our government saying we are citizens of this country or that one, our true citizenship is in Heaven. And because of that, we are just foreigners and exiles during our time here on Earth.

 In the summer of 2002, I attended a two-week mission trip to Hong Kong, China. There was a local Christian ministry we were going to help, and our main project was putting on a VBS for children in the community. I knew it was a short-term trip, there was a specific goal we were working towards, and that I only had a small amount of time to accomplish the work we were given. 

 That’s the kind of mindset we ought to have throughout our lives. If our true home is in Heaven, that makes our time here on Earth a lot like an extended mission trip. We need to learn how to build relationships with the people God has sent us to evangelize without participating in the sinful things the world celebrates. We can’t withdraw completely, since that would limit our ability to reach people for Christ, but we can’t blend in either, since that would compromise our integrity.

 The book of 1 Peter teaches us that the solution to all of this is to embrace our true identity as citizens of Heaven by obeying Jesus and staying true to the faith as we share the Gospel with the people in our your friends.

 Blessings,

Bryan Fojtasek